Erie Extension Canal
Sharpsville, Mercer County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Route of travel and trade, Pittsburgh to Great Lane 1840-1871. Important to the Western Pennsylvania Iron Industry before the rise of the railroads. Lock #10, a guard lock represents the only remaining canal lock.
The Story
The Erie Extension Canal carried boats and cargo across northwestern Pennsylvania from 1840 to 1871, linking the Pittsburgh region toward the Great Lakes in the era before railroads reshaped American commerce. Its slack-water channels and locks floated the iron, coal, and goods that fed the growing furnaces of the Shenango and Mahoning valleys. Lock #10, a surviving guard lock at Sharpsville, is a rare physical remnant of that vanished waterway.
Why it matters
This canal was part of the great mid-19th-century push to knit the young nation together by water, and it helped make western Pennsylvania an early engine of the American iron industry before the railroads took over.
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Related events
- · Operation of the Erie Extension Canal, 1840–1871
Themes & tags
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